Echo Particle Image Velocimetry (Echo-PIV) is a non-invasive ultrasonic technique for finding the multi-component velocity vectors in opaque flows. It is based on particle image velocimetry (PIV), a common technique used for characterizing flow fields. Particles that may be used as flow tracers for such purposes include microbubbles filled with octafluoropropane encapsulated in either a lipid (DEFINITY®, Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc.) or protein (Optison™, GE Healthcare) outer shell, both of which are FDA-approved for clinical use.
Echo-PIV has been found to be a promising approach, and the results obtained appear to be qualitatively meaningful. Blood flow pattern is the fingerprint of cardiac performance. Each heart disease has unique blood flow characteristics and any variation in the blood flow pattern may indicate a change in cardiac performance.
Currently, two-dimensional (2D) blood flow information—obtained by echocardiography—is widely used to quantify cardiac dysfunction. While very useful, this information does not provide sufficient accuracy for characterizing complex three-dimensional flows, such as the flow in the right heart or in hearts with congenital defects. However, the quantification of three-dimensional (3D) cardiac flow patterns has remained a challenging fluid dynamics problem and modern echocardiography-based velocimetry techniques cannot yet acquire data with sufficient spatial and temporal resolution to improve clinical diagnosis. With existing systems, this is believed to be mainly due to the limited frame rate of 3D echocardiographic acquisitions, a limitation imposed by the speed of the ultrasound wave in the tissue. The present application overcomes this and other limitations apparent to those with skill in the art.